Quick Write: Family Photo?

The picture that I looked at first is of a woman and a man, both in bathing suits, both sitting in lawn chairs, and a small boy in the background by a small child’s pool.

The largest and most notable difference between my interpretation and the other person, is simply the large amount that I had to say during the quick write (in the ten minutes I could not possibly write down everything I had to say) and their lack of description. While my description included both broad description and interpretations of the both subject and subject matter as well as examining the smaller details in the photograph, the other person focused mostly more broadly and more on generalization.  Its possible that they did not find as much interesting about this photograph as I did, or simply felt self conscious about writing and interpreting a photograph, which is understandable especially if they never had before.

However what was written was in many ways similar to what I had to say. We both agreed that the photograph was probably taken a while ago, I gave guess of the 1950’s. We also agreed that the photograph likely depicted a family. The other person brought up an interesting point, which I did not think of, but which goes along well with our earlier discussion. They hypothesized that perhaps the people in the picture did not know that they were having their picture taken. While this didn’t strike me outright the first time I saw the photograph, given a second look its very possible. No one is looking at the camera, something which I noted, but did not take further to this reasonable conclusion, and it does not appear to be posed.

We both discussed subject and subject matter to a degree, the main difference again being the amount of detail that was in my description, mentioning many different things that were in the picture as well as many things that could be inferred from the picture, and the lack of detail and elaboration in the other person’s description.  The first thing both of us noted, (I am guessing because it so different from the photographs we take today) is the fact that the photograph is in black and white.  I feel like I spent more time describing the subject matter because I was so focused on all the details in the picture (the picture had a lot in it), describing the picture down to what appeared to be on the table in between the two adults. I also took a stab at guessing from details in the picture, that those pictured were probably pretty well off, the other person didn’t note this, but this was something very noteworthy to me because it helps build a more complete picture of the people in the photograph We both came to the same conclusion that a potential subject for the picture was family.